Best Place to Buy Golden Crabs (2002)

Captain Mike's Fresh Fish and Seafood

First, the bad news about golden crabs: They're as ugly as a hockey player's nose, and their dining habits are macabre. Bearing a striking resemblance to giant spiders, they live in the deep sea and feed on corpses and carcasses, especially favoring rancid eyeballs. But the meat within a golden crab is oh-so-sweet -- not to mention plentiful. Some weigh up to five pounds. It was only in the 1980s that researchers discovered them in great quantities in the deep waters off the Florida coast, and since then, they've been slowly catching on with seafood aficionados. Captain Mike's gets its golden crabs off the shores of Miami Beach from depths of about 1200 feet and sells them whole for $2.69 a pound. Once cooked, they glow like burnished bullion and taste like a million bucks.